


It's a Wonderful Life

by MegMarch1880



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, People aren't perfect, Sympathetic View, World isn't split between saints and death eaters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegMarch1880/pseuds/MegMarch1880
Summary: Everyone has a tendency to characters a certain way but some characters are truly meant to not be the fully evil or negligent that fans like to view them as. So here's a different perspective on some of the more difficult characters.





	It's a Wonderful Life

Dumbledore sat in his office. Just sitting. A lot of things seemed less important after Severus had given him his death sentence. If he didn’t get all of the paperwork done for the school year than Minerva and Filius would surely finish it. The Horcruxes were the key now but Dumbledore doubted he’d be able to finish the task alone now. 

Trust had never come easy for him, Aberforth blamed their mother for that and he perhaps had a point. But time and time again life had seemed to come along and prove that truly deeply trusting someone only ended in heartbreak. 

Yet Dumbledore truly felt that he had tried his best to trust those around him throughout his life. But then his best friend betrayed him, and because of that, his sister died. In his early years, he had never learned how to truly be close to a friend for to be close would mean them meet Adriana, which could mean that’d she would be locked away. 

Aberforth insisted that he always failed people, that he never trusted, yet gave many chances. His brother, however, kept an inn with only goats for company so Dumbledore wasn’t quite sure that he was one to talk. Yet he had failed Sirius. He hadn’t realized that he wasn’t the spy. He knew that Remus still held him somewhat responsible for not realizing that. 

But despite all talk to the contrary. He wasn’t infallible. He made mistakes, he fell short, and he tended to make bigger mistakes than most people. He hadn’t been able to do anything for Sirius because well he’d been furious with him for betraying his brother in all but blood. Yet Sirius hadn’t even been the one to do it. 

Yet second chances still did work. Look at Severus working at Hogwarts after being a death eater. Dumbledore knew that if Harry ever discovered which death eater had told Voldemort the prophecy, he would be in a very difficult spot in explaining why Severus worked for the school. Dumbledore sighed, perhaps what he had told Minerva might explain it, “But even a traitor may mend, I have known one that did.” Minerva had gone on to insist that using Severus as an example of why he should stay was circular logic. And if he had meant him, she would be right. But there were few who remembered him as anything other than a professor and fewer still who would still point out his failings as a child or an adult. But he had been a traitor to the light once, and he would do his best to offer the opportunity to those around him.

**Author's Note:**

> I will freely admit that I have issues with some of Dumbledore’s decisions throughout the books. However, I have also seen throughout in many stories that all of us fans have a habit of excusing flaws, mistakes, or even terrible crimes if our favorite character commits them. Yet if anyone else does the other person is terrible. Now as fans, that’s our right and privilege to do so. However, many times fans seem to expect some characters to be perfect and thus any mistake is a 100xs worse. Thus a one-shot that is trying to remind that making mistakes is what makes Dumbledore and other characters human, not the terrible villains that they are sometimes made out to be. If anyone has any suggestion on other characters they feel deserve this second look, I am open to suggestions! Also the quote Dumbledore uses is from the Chronicles of Narnia, Edmund says it in The Horse and His Boy.


End file.
